Opera Is Dead, Desktop Browser Replaced with Chromium, WebKit on Mobile

[Merk42]

Opera isn't dead, Presto is. Yes it's switching to webkit, but that's what Safari and Web (Epiphany) are. Would you call them Chromium? A browser is more than just its rendering engine.

[mips]

Would you call them Chromium? A browser is more than just its rendering engine.

Well the article does say they are going to rebrand chromium for the desktop...

[koenn]

sad, but inevitable.
Browsers have become a commodity - you get them included in an OS, or as a free download. Rendering engines are commodotized as well, in open source.
To continue competing against that with proprietary code is an enormous, and costly, duplication of effort. Otoh, it makes perfect sense to build upon existing open source engines - the 3rd alternative, making their engine open source in an effort to attract a developer community (as in Netscape -> Firefox), would only work if there's a surplus of interested developers.

By using an open source engine, they benefit from distributed development and they can focus their own development effort on what to lay on top of it. They may be planning to "just rebrand Chrome" to still have a stake in the desktop segment, and have a webkit based mobile Opera as their flagship, or something along those lines.

[smellyman]

why don't they GPL their software?

[tgalati4]

They should have open-sourced Presto, then get some momentum behind their open source efforts and keep their browser (and Opera branding) distinct from the other big players.

[ikt]

Last time I tried Chromium it leaked memory, froze the whole UI, was very buggy, and that was only about a year ago.

Were you running the Chromium daily or the Alpha/beta?

Chrome has been stable for me and everyone I know since the beginning, I can't think of more stable, more quicker, less buggy piece of software.

In regards to Opera it's sad to see them go, but these days with Chrome being essentially 'the web' and Firefox being great for addons and customisation, and Internet Explorer for people who don't know any better there was never a lot of room for Opera sadly.

[screaminj3sus]

I'm sure they wont simply slap an icon on chrome and call it a day, I'd imagine they would implement opera's most popular features that made the desktop version stand apart in the new browser (opera mail, speed dial etc...)

[alexan]

I am proudly Opera's user from the version 4.x

I can't define how much it's epic it's this news to me since basically mean that Opera turns Open Source.

[forrestcupp]

I'm sure they wont simply slap an icon on chrome and call it a day, I'd imagine they would implement opera's most popular features that made the desktop version stand apart in the new browser (opera mail, speed dial etc...)

That's the only possible way this could make sense. Why would anyone ever care to download Chromium that just has an Opera label on it? The only way it makes sense is if they plan on taking Chromium and adding some of their features to it.

[BrokenKingpin]

I did not use the browser, but it is still sad to hear.

They may still have a future though. They could take webkit and still make a really nice browser that has benefits over Chromium. I find Chromium getting a bit memory hungry, so if they made a browser with essentially the same features and light, that could be quite appealing.

That being said it is going to be hard to compete with Chromium because it already has a huge user base and an insane amount of plugins. They could keep comparability with Chromium, but then you take all the baggage of Chromium, so what is the point.